The Heart of the World

by Nik Cohn

  A defunct party in Room 15 had left behind a paperback Nature guide. Motion consulted its index, picking whatever names pleased him, and christened the growths accordingly. ‘Crazyweed, ragweed, jimsonweed,’ he crooned, singsong as a lullaby. ‘Purslane. Spotted purge.’

  ‘Speedwell. Mallow,’ said Reds.

  ‘Lady’s Thumb. Cat’s Ear. Beggar’s Tick.’

  ‘Quack Grass.’

  ‘Poke.’

  Together, they kept the garden safe from the Brothers Kassimatis. In other days, Mike and Petros would have taken its incursions as personal affronts. But this winter had numbed them, too. The Moose had received its death sentence. In weeks or months, a couple of years at best, it would be razed to make way for one more high rise, a block of co-ops, a multi-story carpark. So they only rattled their nightsticks at the toadstools, spat. ‘Floral arrangements,’ said Petros, all disgust. He stared morosely at his wrists, the tangled backs of his hands, as if expecting deadly nightshade to sprout from their black undergrowth. ‘It’s a jungle in here,’ he said.

  The scent of blossom gave Lush Life allergies. She consulted the one book she possessed, 1001 Diseases, and it appeared that she had all of them. ‘Jungle rot,’ she said. ‘Chancre. Grippe.’

  ‘Monkshood. Motherwort,’ said Motion.

  ‘Pesthole. Fambesia. Thrush.’

  ‘Love Lies Bleeding.’

  ‘Yaws.’

  She lay doubled over on her pallet, shivering, in obi and slashed kimono, bound feet. Denise Denise had given her a stereo, an antique boombox that rendered male voices as fog-horns, all females as squalling gulls. By night-light, her room became a harbor wrapped in mists. Sirens wailed, bellbuoys clanged. Somewhere high above, Cio-Cio-San wheeled and fluttered, mewling: ‘Brokenwing. Stigma,’ said Lush Life.

  ‘Wolfbane,’ said Motion.

  ‘Flux.’

  All along one wall hung summer dresses, waiting. Then the blind broke, bright light flooded in. Naked, Lush Life ran to cover, arms shielding her bosom, her sex. ‘I’m not decent,’ she cried. But she could not keep from smiling. Her eyes closed, her arms fell to her sides. The sunlight ate her up every inch. ‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘Oh, well.’

  We went out walking on Broadway.

  This day it was enchanted. One dazzle of sunlight, and all the girls in spring dresses had come out at once. So had the sweet-talkers and slow-walkers, the street musicians, the palmists. ‘Let me read you a beautiful future,’ said Miss Sybil, a yellow girl with orange hair. ‘Five bucks is all.’

  ‘I got three,’ Lush Life said. ‘What future is that?’

  ‘Short,’ said Miss Sybil, ‘but sweet.’

  At every corner, pushcarts peddled hot dogs, cold drinks. Sucking on a Popsicle, her lips a perfect O, Lush Life was a young Tuesday Weld, a teendream in bobby sox, flip-skirt, flickups. When she held my hand, I felt like Eddie Cochran playing hooky: ‘Who’s Eddie Cochran?’ Lush Life asked.

  We rode downtown. In the taxi, the radio deejay played L. L. Cool J, Jazzy Jeff, the Real Roxanne. All winter, it seemed, I had been mired in the past, that dark and soggy land that Sasha called UsedToBe. Now Lush Life stuck on pink eyelashes like spiderlegs, the bike messengers wore lime-green spandex. On the corner of Broadway and Thirty-fourth, a blonde model in a frilly white dress posed over the subway vent, legs flexed wide like Marilyn Monroe, head thrown back and tossing. The deejay played You Be Illin’; Lush Life sang Un Bel Dì.

  Down the block from Union Square, she led me into Julian’s Billiards. As Geraldo Cruz, she had shot a mean stick. These days her game was rusted, and her shakes did not help. Still she could sweep whole tables clean, Straight Pool, Eight-Ball or Nine, quicker than I could chalk a cue.

  Julian’s was an upper room, held sacred. According to the man who punched the clock, it was the oldest working pool-hall in America, went back beyond the First World War. Here The Hustler had been shot, and Willie Mosconi had crushed Minnesota Fats. ‘You could look it up,’ said the man. But why bother? The long ranks of tables, the slow-whirring fans and unspotted greens, told all: ‘You shoot pool in Julian’s, you chalk with the ghosts of giants.’

  Even at noon, most tables were occupied. Gaggles of teenage Koreans, both boys and girls, interspersed with older, graver sticks. Over by the high windows, which were muddy brown with grime, two sailors played. One was tall, the other squat. Save for the clack of balls and squeak of chalk, the odd smothered curse, they made no sound. But when the tall one sank the black, he whirled his face at the light, flashed one white smile, and Lush Life was lost.

  ‘Pinkerton,’ she whispered. But he looked more like Jerry Lee Lewis – a rawboned and towheaded youth with freckles, big hands, bigger feet. Though a certain manic glint spoke of crossroads, of family Bibles and whiskey rivers, he shook hands shyly, blushing. ‘Tommy Blalock,’ he said.

  ‘Vida Lujuriante,’ said Lush Life.

  ‘A pretty name,’ said Tommy, ‘for one pretty lady.’

  He came from New Iberia, Louisiana, World’s Capital of Capsicum, the hot pepper that made Mace and Tabasco sauce; and his voice held a Cajun lilt, an accordion’s lurch and ramble. With Hap Cowley from Plaquemines Parish, he’d been ranging the streets for two days and a night, and now they were broke, sore, disgusted, for nobody would talk, not a soul give them time: ‘Excepting they get paid,’ Tommy Blalock said.

  It was his first time in New York. All the way up in the train from Norfolk, Virginia, he’d kept humming On Broadway by the Drifters: ‘Like a sick headache, won’t let you be,’ he said. ‘They say the neon lights are bright. They say there’s always magic in the air.’

  Hap Cowley preferred the next verse. ‘They say the girls,’ he began, ‘are something else.’

  ‘But how you gonna make some time?’

  ‘When you ain’t got …’

  ‘But one thin dime?’

  ‘Good question,’ said Lush Life.

  ‘One thin dime, and a diamond watch.’

  ‘Good answer,’ said Lush Life. ‘Good answer.’

  Blurred sunlight, dancing with motes, slanted on her blonde wig, her pink lashes. Beneath her thin dress, her shoulder blades rose sharp and brittle, toy wings. ‘It’s bright in here,’ she said. ‘In a bar, it’s dark.’ She was shivering again. ‘In a movie, it’s even darker,’ she said.

  ‘Pitch black,’ said Tommy Blalock.

  ‘But warm. It’s warm,’ said Lush Life.

  Back on Union Square, the Farmer’s Market was setting up. The promenade was riotous with color, scent, growth. Stalls spilled over with asparagus and arugula, radicchio, spring greens. A poster advertised Bitch Dyke Fag Hag Whore, a new performance piece by Penny Arcade. By the entrance to the IRT, a sidewalk artist was sketching black orchids. ‘Daddy, buy me,’ said Lush Life, crooning low. ‘Buy me some new shoes.’

  They went their ways, I went mine. On Eighteenth, I fell across the Old Town Tavern, a place of battered tin ceilings, deep mahogany booths. On the bar, a fat tabby cat sat toasting, its image trapped in cut-glass mirrors.

  A drunken man, the color of a chocolate milkshake, went weaving out of sunlight into shadow, then back again into sun. At my booth he stopped, swayed low in my face. His breath was bitter almonds, the stuff of cyanide, but his mouth was much obliged. ‘Spring be sprung,’ said the drunken man.

  Sunstoned myself, I dozed; when I woke, it was dark.

  Back at the Moose, Motion was weeding the floorboards with a kitchen fork. ‘A little bit compost is all it takes, we could make grow our own vegetables,’ he said. ‘Plantain, pawpaw.’

  ‘Cassava, callaloo, calabaza,’ said Reds.

  ‘Ganja. Canned ackee.’

  ‘Rum.’

  I sat reading in my room, lost in The Fabulous Showman. I had reached the passage where Barnum’s museum burns down: ‘From Maiden Lane to Chambers Street, Broadway was lined with forty thousand people watching a blaze worthy of Nero’s art… . Great billows of smoke invaded the upper stories, and m
any freaks were overcome. Fortunately, innumerable fire engines clanged up before the building just in time.’

  From a room across the street, a reporter called Nathan D. Urner had witnessed the rescue of Anna Swan, the seven-foot-eleven-inch giantess from Nova Scotia, who was found at the top of the third-story staircase. ‘There was not a door through which her bulky frame could obtain a passage. It was likewise feared that the stairs would break down, even if she should reach them. Her best friend, the living skeleton, stood by her as long as he dared, but then deserted her, while as the heat grew in intensity, the perspiration rolled from her face in little brooks and rivulets, which pattered musically upon the floor. At length, as a last resort, the employees of the place procured a lofty derrick which fortunately happened to be standing near, and erected it alongside the Museum. A portion of the wall was then broken off on each side of the window, and the strong tackle was got in readiness, the tall woman was made fast to one end and swung over the heads of the people in the street, with eighteen men grasping the other extremity of the line, and lowered down from the third story, amid enthusiastic applause.’

  An orangutan, meanwhile, had made his way to the nearby New York Herald and invaded the editor’s office. ‘The poor creature, but recently released from captivity, and doubtless thinking that he might fill some vacancy in the editorial corps of the paper in question, had descended by the waterpipe and instinctively taken refuge in the inner sanctum of the establishment.’

  Panic-stricken, the book editor, the music critic, and sundry cub reporters rushed the beast and tried to subdue it. Flinging them off, the orangutan leaped over Bennett’s desk, made a wild dash for the window. As the crowd watched horrified from below, it teetered on a narrow ledge, eighty feet above Park Row. Flames seemed to shoot from its eyes. An agonized cry curled its lips. ‘Don’t ask,’ said Lush Life. ‘Just don’t ask.’

  Bending low above the marigolds, she kissed my cheek, my chin. She was crying and wearing new shoes, high-heel scarlet slingbacks, a couple of sizes too big, which made her look like a child masquerading. ‘It must be love,’ she said.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘It hurts,’ she said, ‘so good.’

  Her feet also hurt. Like her mother, she was a martyr to fallen arches. Of all her parts, her dogs alone defied her, remained inescapably male. Flatfoot floogies, calloused and carbuncled, they belonged to a trainee cop.

  Normally she kept them bound, out of sight. But tonight she kicked them high. ‘Tommy knows. He already saw,’ she said, ‘I have no secrets from him.’

  She had not meant to come so clean, not when they’d entered the shoestore. They’d gone to the Paradise Bootery, famous for its six-inch stiletto heels. She shopped there all the time; all the girls on Times Square did. But she was bashful, even so. Young Tuesday Welds wore size six, but Lush Life took nines. So she told Tommy not to look. But he did, of course. And he touched her. Right there in the shop, in front of the salesgirl and everyone, he reached out his hand, took her whole naked foot and cupped it in his palm. His hand was hairless, raw pink, the color of fresh bubblegum, with thick blue veins, and her foot was swallowed whole. All that stuck out was her big toe, fat and twisted, with a scabbed blister on its joint. And Tommy bent his head, he kissed the scab. So you see. He kissed her foot. He bought her red shoes. The biggest red shoes in the house, they were ten wides, much much too big, but he said they fitted perfectly. ‘It’s just your feet,’ he said, ‘they’re so small.’

  Afterwards, they had not gone to the movies. Instead of hiding in the dark warm, they’d spent the afternoon at Broadway and Fiftieth, pressed up against a hole in a wooden fence, spectators at a high-rise building site. Lush Life’s feet hurt. The red shoes opened up her blisters, made her limp. Tommy was concerned. He was a perfect gentleman. He lifted her up in his arms, to get a better view. He bought her ice cream, a magazine. He promised me the world and all its glories. But he could not drag himself away from the cranes and hods, the gloppiter-gloppiter machines, the dirt. ‘The sea is his meal ticket, but construction is his first love,’ Lush Life said. ‘When he gets out the service, he hopes to construct himself.’

  His uncle was a bricklayer before him, but his grandfather preached, and his father ran a bar. Outside of New Iberia, on Avery Island, Tommy himself had picked hot peppers. Then he got in a little trouble, had to go see the world. He knew sorrow, he knew shame. But he’s put it all behind him. In five more weeks, his voyaging would be done, and he’d be free to go home, settle down. Meantime, he was dating but not going steady. He’s still looking for Miss Right.

  Out in the hallway, the nightbloods were gathering. Motion had invested in some Bacardi. The bottle clinked against the wall, the radio played torch songs. Kicking off the red shoes, Lush Life began to massage her big feet. ‘Vida Lujuriante,’ she said. ‘So bind me.’

  Dried tears smeared her cheeks. Along with the powder and paint, weeping seemed to have stripped off fresh layers of skin, so that she looked more naked than ever. ‘Make it tight,’ she said. ‘Tight, tight.’ Her teeth chattered, jarred on her bottle of Night Train. ‘He’s just a boy,’ she said.

  She felt reborn. The world was started over. This very night, on her way home from Tommy Blalock, she’d turned into our block and found the street full of nattering corpses, dead men who would not lie down.

  It was a movie set; a fire was being shot. On the site of a razed hotel, a plywood theater had been built, scripted to burst into flame. But there was a problem with the extras. They were disgruntled with their wages, or they mistrusted the safety precautions. Whatever, they would not work. The producers threatened, the director cajoled, but the extras were adamant. Unless they got satisfaction, they would march off the set, leave the whole scene hanging. So you see. Fire sirens were wailing, spectators catcalling, the whole street lit up and waiting. But the extras only stood around, drinking coffee.

  Finally, the producers had laid down an ultimatum. Either work, they said, or get lost. ‘So what d’you think the dead men do?’ Lush Life asked.

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘They walk,’ she said. ‘They walk.’

  12

  All things new, said the sign.

  I had entered another realm. Lower Broadway had been ruled by old men, and young men born old. But now I had crossed Canal, and the climate was reversed. To the north, it was the young who reigned, and those who weren’t young pretended.

  On the corner of Grand was a red-headed stripling selling Consciousness. A Giacometti figure, splindle-shanked in sandals, shorts, and red woollen socks, he offered Insight at discount, A Whole Other You: ‘Deals you cannot, you dare not turn down.’

  For fifty cents, I bought a neat blue package stamped BE AWARE. But the warning came too late. When I opened the packet up, it turned out to contain a booklet entitled Cockroaches, put out by Am York, Laboratories of Pest Control.

  Its author was Mohammad U. Shadab, PhD. He had actively worked with bugs and spiders for the last fourteen years, said the blurb. He had always been concerned with roaches and their problems.

  At a Cuban luncheon counter, I drank cafe con leche, read on. ‘Roaches are not only disgusting but dangerous for health,’ Shadab wrote. ‘They drink water, milk and beer. They also eat dead insects, their own cast-off skins, dead roaches, fresh and dried blood, excrement, sputum, finger- and toenails, and they lick the saliva of sleeping or comatose people. They are active at night so that their dirty habits are not seen or known.’

  ‘Vampires. I fuckin’ despise ’em,’ spoke a voice, reading over my shoulder. ‘They suck my blood, I suck theirs.’

  The voice belonged to a Hell’s Angel, a small, furry creature in leather and chains. ‘Only one thing worse, that’s a splash,’ he said.

  ‘Splash?’

  ‘Painter. Fuckin’ artist,’ the Angel said.

  The grievance was new, still raw. Five years before, this had been an art-free zone. Now the stuff was everywhere: Not only dis
gusting but dangerous for health, the Angel quoted. He picked his nose, contemplated the spoils. ‘Disfuckingusting,’ he said.

  Leading me outdoors, he sniffed the air suspiciously, pointed like a chained setter. But I could detect no odor of creation. On the contrary, Broadway smelled bracing as Cape Cod.

  It happened every March. All winter New York reeked, a toxic wasteland. Then suddenly, as if ozone-bombed, it would come up cleansed, brand new. For a week then, maybe two, the air held a zip and fizz, a glamour that made Angels sing: ‘Splish fuckin’ splash,’ sang mine.

  Broadway was superb here. In its entire length, twenty-one miles through Manhattan and the Bronx, no stretch was finer than these few blocks, Canal Street to Houston.

  In the 1840s and 1850s, the first fine flush of Barnumism, this had been the heart of Night-town. Hell’s Hundred Acres, as SoHo was known then, was a hidden swamp of brothels and low taverns. But Broadway was an open tumult. Along this strip lay theaters and gaslit cafes, concert saloons such as Niblo’s, amusement parks such as the Vauxhall Gardens, and the grandest of grand hotels – the St Nicholas, the Carlton House, the Metropolitan.

  On the balcony of the Carlton House, Charles Dickens sat making his American Notes, glassy-eyed at the evening promenade, the carriages and their coachmen, the ladies in silks, the gentlemen preening their whiskers and, above all, the pigs: ‘Ugly brutes they are, having for the most part, scanty brown backs, like the lids of old horsehair trunks, spotted with unwholesome blotches. At this hour, just as evening is closing in, you will see them roaming towards bed by scores, eating their way to the last. Occasionally, some youth among them who has over-eaten himself, or has been much worried by dogs, trots shrinkingly homeward, like a prodigal son; but this is a rare case – perfect self-possession and self-reliance, and immovable composure being their foremost attributes.’

  Picking their way through the scavenging swine, the Broadway crowds swarmed into Wood’s Minstrel Hall, and the Olympic, home of West’s Amazing Circus, and the Chinese Rooms. These last became Barnum’s second American Museum when the first burned down; and that too ended up in ashes.